Hello, welcome back to the daily poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I am David Currie.

Today's poem is by Robert Frost. It's been a little while since we did a Robert Frost poem.

And I figure, just by way of principle, we should probably plan in doing a Frost poem once a month.

Today's poem is called Mending Wall, and it's certainly one of his most famous poems.

It was composed around 1912 and published in 1914, and is the first poem in his second collection,

which is called North of Boston, a title which, as William Harmon puts it, suggests the world of

Northern New England in austere and rocky region. I'll go ahead and read it, offer a few comments,

and as usual read it one more time, The Mending Wall by Robert Frost.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall that sends the frozen ground swell under it and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass the breast.

The work of hunters is another thing. I have come after them and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone,

but they would have the rabbit out of hiding to please the yelping dogs.

The gaps, I mean, no one has seen them made or heard them made,

but at spring mending time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill,

and on the day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each, the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves, and some so nearly balls, we have to use a spell to make them balance.

Stay where you are until our backs are turned.

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, one on the side.

It comes to little more.

...